The Self-Actualized Marriage with Scott Berry

In this Episode

• [02:13]Stephan introduces Scott Berry and briefly discusses their history together. Scott explains how he founded The Self-Actualized Marriage program.
• [07:03]Scott outlines a typical transformation that attendees experience during The Self-Actualized Marriage retreat.
• [12:41]Stephan defines the concept of ambiguous grief.
• [16:28]Stephan and Scott explore the importance of having a support system and the need to set healthy boundaries.
• [22:25]Scott shares an example of how he manages conflict in his own marriage.
• [25:40]Scott highlights a few individuals who inspire his program, and they delve into the five love languages.
• [31:29]Stephan asks Scott how he navigates expressing love when there’s a disconnect. Scott also touches on the concept of The All-or-Nothing Marriage by Eli Finkel.
• [35:25]Scott offers his perspective on declining marriage satisfaction rates.
• [39:49]Scott recalls a significant breakthrough he and his wife achieved in their marriage.
• [45:28]Information on how to connect with Scott Berry.

Jump to Links and Resources

Scott, it’s so great to have you on the show.

Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

We know each other from a mastermind, a brotherhood called M.E.T.A.L., where we have many shared friends and colleagues. Are you still in there?

I am not. But I will say that M.E.T.AL. and just anything that brings together a collection of inspiring men, I think, is so underrated. As men, we desperately need to have men to be vulnerable with and then to also have men who challenge us. And especially as we start to get into relationships, a lot of times we can kind of get lazy because sometimes a lot of our social needs are met within the nuclear family. It’s like, “Okay, maybe I don’t have to go out as much.” I think having a collection of really good guys to rap with, hang out with, and have a brotherhood with is so important. That’s where I met you—just a really good group of guys.

Let’s talk about how you got into this whole self-actualized marriage focus and how that came about.

I started out doing individual counseling. That’s what I’m trained on, doing one-on-one coaching and one-on-one counseling. What I had found out coming up time and time again is a lot of the strains and the stresses that a lot of I was working primarily with men at that time is they would be very successful, like, in their business and other areas of their life, like, with their body, but they would sometimes be struggling with their relationship. 

I found there’s a thread that if someone’s intimate relationship is not going well, it’s really hard for people to find fulfillment and happiness in other pieces of their lives. It just kind of got me down this rabbit hole of learning more about how to optimize relationships. Different dynamics between men and women, masculine-feminine, and really studying all of the greats to figure out, “Okay, how do we really optimize a relationship?”

This is just my personal opinion: when your relationship is off, it’s really hard to just be happy and fulfilled. You can have all these other successes in your life, but if your intimate relationship is off, it’s almost like nothing else matters. It’s like the core foundation.

Your intimate relationship is the core foundation of your success in life.

It’s so critically important, especially nowadays, when we put so much of our time and energy into our relationship based on maybe 100-200 years ago when there was a communal aspect that we used to live in, where our partner would maybe be there for sex and for helping rear the children, but then you would get all of your other needs met through the other pieces of the community. Now, there’s so much emphasis on the relationship, so these are higher expectations. Most of these expectations are not being met. That had just kind of set me on the path to learn more about it, and I’ve just been obsessed with it ever since.

Is this program that you’ve created, The Self-Actualized Marriage, with your wife, or is that something you teach and mentor people just yourself?

It’s just myself. It’s a program where I do one-on-one individual counseling with couples through coaching. Then, we’d run a yearly retreat. This one’s in September in Mill Valley in northern California. When I do my retreats, she’s with me. I’ll help lead a lot of the exercises, but then we’ll do a lot of exercises where we’ll split the men and the women, and then she’ll go ahead and help both facilitate that. It’s mostly me, but then she kind of comes in and supports me with that.

How long have you been doing these retreats?

I think the first retreat was in 2019. We were able to do a few, and then the pandemic hit, and now we’re just starting to roll them back out again.

What would be some sort of typical or maybe prototypical transformation that you get from a retreat attendee or couple?

We focus on a few things. I want every attendee, whether they’re doing the retreat or they’re working with me personally, to walk away with a couple of things, one with a roadmap on what they can do to make the relationship better. Then, I want them to have a feeling of excitement about the future of the relationship. I want them to be excited. Like, “I’m so excited for the next few years with you and what we’re able to build.” I really want my couples to get clarity on what it is that they need. 

Like, “What do I want now? What do I want to build with you in the next three to five years? How do we align on that?” Then, get clear on your own needs and expectations, and then get clear on which of those needs I can get in the relationship and which of those needs I can get outside of the relationship. Often, we are looking to have all of these needs met in the relationship, and it’s kind of creating an unfair kind of level, or I would even call it a burden for the partner to kind of meet all of these needs, and it gets really heavy.

Get clear on your own needs and expectations, and then on which of those needs you can fulfill in the relationship and which you can fulfill outside of the relationship.

Having them walk away with, “Oh, wow, I don’t have to have my partner fulfill everything. Here are the things that I need. I’m clear about what I want: I want to create this business with you. I want to move. I want to travel around the world. I want to buy a new house. I want to raise goats in the middle of Maine.” I don’t know what it is, but getting clear on that and then getting into alignment so you guys both have something to build. That’s really what I want them to walk away with. A sense of excitement when they’re leaving, when we’re working together, and a roadmap to be just a little bit clearer on how they can attain that.

Feel free to anonymize it as much as you want, but any particular scenario that really sticks out for you, like, “Wow, this marriage was completely transformed,” or the relationship was on the blank, then it got saved, or something like that, or anything you want to share about a particular scenario.

I have one couple who have been together for about eight years. They’d been married for five and a half, and there was an infidelity in the relationship. They were monogamous. They weren’t open, not polyamorous. One of the partners had cheated on them a few times. There was this kind of sense of betrayal from the other partner. They were at first trying to figure out what to do with that because prior to that, of course, they had some issues. They had a really happy marriage.

They were actually really happy. If we were to ask them before all that happened, or even right before it happened, they said, “Oh, no, we love each other.” And so you get a sense that there was a sense of connection, love, and respect for the most part, except for that area. What they had to do was they had to get really clear, “What I needed in this relationship if I was going to continue. What do I need to feel safe and secure?” 

Then, for the person who was actually creating the adultery, “What is it that I need to feel alive? What was it that was maybe missing that pushed me outside to lie and be deceitful?” We would work on that. With that relationship, what we had to do was almost have to have a ceremony to honor the death of that relationship. 

We will go through three to five to six different marriages in our entire life. Sometimes they’re going to be with the same person, and sometimes they’re not. But when you have something that is shaken in the relationship, like an infidelity, like the death of a child, or something very emotional, that old relationship is basically dead. We have to make a decision, “Okay, that one is dead.” We need to honor that.

We almost need to have a ceremony to say goodbye to that. “Are we willing to rebuild now? Are we really willing to move forward and rebuild a new path and a new relationship?” If the answer is yes, then we really have to let go of the old one to build the new one. You’ll find these iterations of marriages as well when we have major life events. 

If we end up having the same expectations that we do from the previous marriage and bring them into the next marriage, we might set ourselves up for a little bit of conflict and a little bit of disappointment.

A lot of times, if you’ve been married for six years and have a child, your next relationship with your partner will be pretty different than it was for your last one. If we end up having the same expectations from the previous marriage and bringing them into marriage 2.0 or marriage 3.0, we might set ourselves up for a little bit of conflict and disappointment. I’m just getting a little bit clear on what we need. In that specific example, we really had to honor the death, make sure that we’re both into creating something bigger and then go over it. “Hey, this is what I need to feel safe. Here’s what we need to go.” 

One of my past guests, Stephanie Sarazin, wrote a book about ambiguous grief. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard that term. Have you heard of ambiguous grief?

I haven’t, but I’m curious.

When you have a clear loss that is kind of universally accepted as one, like you lose a spouse to an accident or a fatal disease, you get support, hopefully usually, right? The community comes together, as does the family. They’ll drop off food, they’ll check in on you, they’ll attend the funeral, all that. But if it’s ambiguous grief, then it’s like, “Well, you know, you just have to get over it. Yeah, that’s terrible that your spouse cheated on you, and that’s life. You just got to buck up.” 

It’s like, where’s the support? You’re left without a support system. So, she writes about this in her book, Soulbroken. It’s just really important for people to understand that there’s ambiguous grief where it’s not so clear cut, and thus you don’t get the support, you get misunderstood, and you get kind of chided and chastised instead of loved and hugged. It’s very hard.

It’s interesting when there’s a very obvious, almost societal, accepted form of grief in which people will come together and say, “Hey, let me help you. What do you need?” You could have serious, heavy grief with the death of a cat who’s 22 years old, and you’re finding it hard just to get up and make coffee in the morning. But society or friends are like, “If it’s a 22-year-old cat, why can’t you get over it?” But there’s still something that you’re processing. That’s really interesting. I can kind of understand that.

Let’s say your parent, heaven forbid, has dementia or something. They’re there, but not really there. So you’re grieving this, and nobody really is supporting you through this. It’s hard.

We talked about M.E.T.AL. earlier, and the one thing that I can say is there are three aspects to a relationship. There’s him, there’s her, at least in a heterosexual relationship. Then there’s the union that you guys have created together, this marriage, this partnership, whatever you want to call it. We want to make sure that we are feeding each of those identities. This is true for both partners, but especially for men, to have one or two guys that you could actually call in the middle of the night and actually be incredibly vulnerable with and have someone that you can actually talk to.

If you had this type of grief in your life, they wouldn’t question it. They would just be like, “How can I help you? Do you just need the ear? Do you need some advice? What can I do for you?” That’s really, really important. It does two things. One, it kind of gives you a safety social net. The other thing it does is it doesn’t put all of the heaviness on the other partner to be the support structure. It’s really nice to be able to get an outside opinion and support that’s outside the relationship because nothing’s going to trigger you more typically than your intimate partnership. 

By having a little bit of outside help, and no matter what you’re going through, to have someone who’s non-judgmental, just openly loving, and that you can actually be vulnerable. That’s a really tricky thing for men to actually be authentically vulnerable with somebody.

It’s really important for both partners to have a support system outside the relationship.

Women typically have a little bit of an easier time to be able to do that, but not always. But it’s really important for both partners to have that support system outside the relationship. I cannot stress that enough.

What does that support system look like? If you don’t have it, how do you get it?

To me, that support system is one or two really good friends that you can just be authentic with and be able to feel comfortable enough to be able to share your sh*t. I think that happens if you don’t already have that, having some friendships in your life, the ones that you’re just feeling a little bit closer to. Vulnerability breeds vulnerability. For people who you’d actually like to kind of cultivate that relationship with a little bit deeper, be a little bit vulnerable and share something that is maybe a little bit uncomfortable. 

You don’t have to make it weird. You don’t have to make it super uncomfortable, but just by sharing a little. “Hey, how are you doing? How was your weekend?” Instead of, “Great,” you can say, “Well, it was okay, but, man, I really had this challenging thing,” and you can just kind of explain it and just see where they are, and then you can kind of get the feedback and then just kind of play it from there. But I think it’s just kind of baby steps to being more authentic and vulnerable.

That’s the hardest part—to be a little bit more raw. We’re just not used to it. Most people have not been taught, especially men, to be vulnerable. What I find in a lot of men that I work with is that a lot of times, they’ll end up in two camps. One is they end up being the nice guy, which they end up becoming a little bit of a pushover. Then, on the other hand, they become the dominant leader. 

Find the right balance to be a masculine leader but still tap into your feminine side.

But they do it in a way that is a little bit machismo and a little bit domineering. Finding that right balance to be a masculine leader, but to still be able to tap into your feminine, to still be in touch with your emotions, but you’re still a leader, you’re still decisive, you’re still strong in who you are, that you can lead your woman, you can do all of that great stuff, but you’re still open. And just most of us, as men, have not been taught that.

A lot of us men just haven’t had very strong, masculine father role models as well to be able to represent that. And so this is what I really appreciate about your podcast. You have a lot of thought leaders on there who are helping pave the way for that because it’s definitely much needed.

But there’s a balance. If you’re trying to be vulnerable and authentic and you’re also oversharing in the process, then you can be damaging your relationship and the amount of trust that you’ve built up with your spouse and partner. You have to be calibrated to what you’re sharing and whether that is yours to share or not.

To add to that quickly, you should have that conversation with your partner just before you need that support. “Hey, if I ever do need that support, what feels good to be able to share?” I know sometimes it is a little bit uncomfortable to peel back the curtain on what’s going on in a relationship. And I know that I’ve always been really guarded, that I’ve got a tendency to always say, “Oh, no, it’s great, you know, things are going well.” 

But when I am able to kind of, like, share something vulnerable about a challenge in my relationship, I’ve always felt a lot better. And then, when I feel better, I’m able to process it. I can come back into the relationship a little bit less reactive and a bit more open. I think it’s really important just to say, “Hey, would it be okay to share some of this? What would feel good to you?”

I tend to overshare. Sometimes I really upset my partner when I do that, and she’s like, “You shouldn’t have shared that.” I need to be more thoughtful and careful about what I’m sharing. If it’s just about me, then that’s one thing. But if it’s about the relationship or her, I need to be mindful.

Are you clear on what you can and can’t share?

Pretty clear. We’ve worked on that.

Our relationship’s going to be trial and error. It’s great that you guys even have that awareness. I just find that most of the time, it’s men who just do not seek any type of support outside the relationship.

Our relationships are gonna be trial and error.

It’s good to be able to vent, and just kind of have that support system because what men typically end up doing, and this is true for women as well, is we end up becoming very reactive in a very childlike state, or we just shut down and we just get very dismissive. So that’s not going to move the relationship forward. 

If you’re in a relationship right now, this came as a nice little tidbit and relief to me. It was the Gottmans who you actually had on your program. If I remember correctly, they said that something around 70% or 73% of all relationships or all conflicts in a relationship won’t be solved. I found that really interesting. If you kind of know that going in, you’re not necessarily going to resolve the conflict, but it’s about how you can work together through the conflict and then find your compromise within that, at least that made me feel a little bit better because it’s like, “Wow, we didn’t really fix that.” It didn’t come out with a perfect solution, but it’s about progress and not perfection. It’s just how we can find a balance that works well for us.

What’s an example of a conflict that you’re allowed to share because you’re not oversharing without permission, but something personal to your relationship where you have a conflict and relationship that isn’t going to get solved?

What’s coming up for me right now? I’ve got a few, and I’m pretty good about being open about this. Money is a big thing in most relationships. We just all have a different monetary blueprint that we bring to the table. I tend to be the saver of the relationship. She typically is a spender. She makes money, but she’s also a spender. It’s an interesting dynamic of where we find value in where we spend our money, and sometimes found in a compromise in between that if we’re going to buy a hotel room, to me, I’d rather have the cheapest thing possible, because to me if it’s not an experience, who cares. 

But if it’s an experience, I’m more than happy to pay a ton of money. But she likes these luxury hotels. How do we find that balance? If I’m going to buy an alarm system or anything electronic, I want the best, right? That’s what my value is. So, finding that compromise, at least for us, in monetary terms, is something we’re always dancing with.

How do you address that so that even though it’s not getting solved, you’re reducing conflict and resentment? The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are Dr. Gottman, which are criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling.

I think the biggest thing is explaining why you’re coming from that angle. Here’s why. I think spending 400 nights in a hotel room is just a nice hotel versus an experience that doesn’t feel good to me. Tell me why it feels good to you, and then we can kind of go back and forth, I think, just kind of explaining your side as opposed to you don’t want to demonize the other side.

I think that’s a really quick place which a lot of us go to, “Is that what’s wrong with you? It makes no sense to spend that much money on that particular thing.” As opposed to, “Hey, here’s where I find value. Here’s where I don’t find value. Here’s where I would love to maybe put that money. Here’s where I’d like to allocate it. What would you like to do about it?” Then, just have a discussion. But I think explaining why that is coming from an “I” place versus a “you” place and then just having that conversation, I don’t know if that answers your question.

Earlier, you mentioned studying the greats, and I’m guessing that, well, sounds like Dr. Gottman and Dr. Gottman because there are two of them.

The Dr. Gottmans. Absolutely.

Husband and wife. Who else would be considered great, in your opinion?

The ones who really have been moving me. A lot of my work on The Self-Actualized Marriage is done by a gentleman named Eli Finkel. He’s got a great book called The All-or-Nothing Marriage, and I highly recommend it. Of course, Esther Perel and Sue Johnson are really great. I know this won’t sound weird to you, but it may sound weird to a lot of people who are not familiar with his work—Tony Robbins is fantastic when it comes to relationship work. I know you’ve studied with him. He’s fantastic. David Deida is great for learning about masculine-feminine dynamics. David Deida can be a little bit triggering for some, but I really do appreciate his work, along with a good buddy of mine, John Wineland. So I think if you start with those, those are all really good.

What about Gary Chapman and The Five Love Languages?

I was just about to bring that up. It’s a little bit old school, but, yeah, the five love languages are really key, and I will say, so this is a personal thing for me, is understanding your partner’s love language and then learning to reinforce how to appreciate that, especially if that love language is not your own.

My love language is acts of service. I’ll come home and put up a picture for her. Maybe she ordered a picture, and it’s been sitting in the box for a while, and I’ll put up the picture, and the first thing that I’ll do when she gets home is like, “Hey, can I show you something?” I get really excited to be able to show her what I did.

They’re like, “See, see?” For any women listening out there, praise your man. The little things that we do, we live to get that little hero badge for that appreciation. It’s fuel for us. We absolutely love it. And where I’ve seen a lot of relationships come into disarray is when there is not an appreciation for each of the other partners, especially for men, to not get that appreciation for just the little things that we do. 

My wife’s love language is words of affirmation. That’s not mine, but I have to keep reminding myself of the little things, like, “Wow, you look really pretty today.” “Thank you for doing this.” “Oh, you look amazing.” And things of that nature. I forget because I think she’s such a beautiful woman. I don’t always vocalize it, and I need to vocalize my appreciation of her a hell of a lot more. That’s something that I’m always catching myself with because it’s not my innate love language, and I just don’t think about it.

But whenever she gets her hair done, I want to make it a point to just notice, appreciate, and honor it. It’s not vanity. It’s just about appreciation, and she really appreciates that. For men, notice your woman. Appreciate your woman. The feminine just loves to be appreciated and noticed.

What’s your primary love language?

It’s definitely an act of service. I love doing stuff for my woman. Like, she’ll come home, and I’d be like, “I just cleaned out your hard drive. I just updated your operating system.” That’s not very sexy. It doesn’t sound very sexy, but I get so excited to do stuff for my queen. So it’s definitely an act of service.

Do you like receiving acts of service from her?

I do love receiving acts of service.

The five love languages are words of affirmation, acts of service, physical touch, quality time, and gifts.

Her secondary love language is gifts. Interestingly, I used to be critical of my wife regarding gifts to the point where I’d almost get upset with her because she would get me little gifts all the time. I didn’t realize at the time that that was her love language. I would get frustrated because she would get this little gift I didn’t know and would appreciate. But then I’m like, “Ah, this is just environmental trash. I don’t need any more clutter in my life.”

I failed to recognize that’s her love language. She was trying to give me little things. She’s always buying me little gifts, and she’s always buying little gifts for friends. We’ll meet up with friends, and she’ll create ten little gift packs to give to people. I’ve really appreciated that because that is definitely not my love language. Like, I almost kind of curl back a little bit. I don’t like consumerism. I don’t like its environmental impact.

Understand your partner’s love language and learn to reinforce how to appreciate that.

But I forget that there is love that’s bundled in with that. I’ve come to appreciate and be less critical because I was critical of the gift-giving aspect of her love language. I’m glad you brought those up because men and women, please try to recognize your partner’s love languages and really appreciate them, especially if they’re not your own. And typically, they’re not; they’re definitely different. 

You have to stretch outside your company.

Are you familiar with your love language?

Mine’s physical touch, and for Orion, it’s giving gifts and acts of service.

Are gifts number one or number two?

Gifts are number one. If there’s this disconnect and how you convey your love to your partner in a way that you want to receive it, but not in the way that she wants to receive it, then you know, that will create a rift or at least some discontent.

For men, notice and appreciate your woman. The feminine just loves to be appreciated.

We end up not feeling loved. We end up not feeling appreciated. If you really looked at it, you’re like, “Wow. No, they actually are. It’s just not how I’m used to receiving it.” And so our filter, if you will, of all the data that’s coming in, our reticular activating system is able to receive those gifts as love when normally, I would get gifts and say, “Oh, it’s appreciated,” but I didn’t see it as love, and now I see it as love.

You mentioned earlier The All-or-Nothing Marriage by Eli Finkel. What is the concept or the premise there that makes it all-or-nothing?

In his book, he talks about a few different things, and I’m going to make this concise. There is an evolution of marriage. For hundreds of years, marriage wasn’t necessarily based on love. It was based on survival. It was having more kids to a bigger family to tend the farm and to create survival. He talks a lot about marriage as a hierarchy or a triangle.

If you’re familiar with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, it kind of fits into there where it goes physiological, and then it goes safety, and then it goes love and then goes success, and then it goes to self-actualization, and you have to meet the bottom rungs of the pyramid before you can kind of go up. The earlier days of marriage were mostly about fulfilling the bottom rungs of that pyramid, mostly for survival. Once we entered the early 20th century, we started marrying for love versus economics, food, safety, shelter, and survival.

It all became about love. As we started progressing, what we’re asking from our partner is not necessarily love, but I’m asking you to help me be the best possible version of myself, a self-actualized person. It puts a really heavy emphasis and expectation on the other partner because that’s a lot to ask for. We’re expecting our partner to step up to help us be our best selves. Most relationships are falling short. This is where a lot of my work kind of comes in. But he talks about how you can understand what you’re asking for. He calls it Mount Maslow.

To take your relationship to the top of Mount Maslow, ask for these needs and then structure the relationship to facilitate that. But in most marriages right now, if you asked them to rate their relationship based on what their parents or grandparents had, what you would consider a good relationship would be considered a terrible one now. We’re asking for a lot from our marriage. He talks a lot about the evolution of marriage and that aspect of it.

Why do you think the divorce rate is on the rise or has been for some decades? What’s the problem here? That, hopefully, is fixable.

As we start progressing, what we’re asking from our partner is not necessarily love but to be self-actualized.

From my understanding, the divorce rate has actually been steady over the last few decades. It’s basically hovered around halfway between 40-60%. What’s really dropped is the satisfaction rate of marriages. Surveys that have been done over the last say, 5, 10, maybe 15 years, show that you’ll see a slight decrease in the rate of marital satisfaction or relationship satisfaction for long-term relationships. That’s typically due to the higher expectations that we are placing on relationships and not having those expectations met. The core fundamental of happiness is when expectations don’t meet reality. We are putting a really hard emphasis on being a bit of our better self, our more self-actualized self. And we’re having these expectations for our partner to do that.

What has also been happening over the last few decades, if not 100 years, is that we have gone from community and tribal living and tribal relationships to the nuclear family. A lot of where we would get our needs met is really concentrated in the relationship. We are asking a lot from our partnerships and don’t have the tools. We don’t even have an understanding of what’s going on.

We have these subconscious, high expectations of the relationship, but they’re not being met. A lot of times, we don’t know why that is right. And that’s some of the work I do: getting clear on, “Okay, what is it that you need that you think you need to have a fulfilling relationship? And then let’s start from there.”

Then where can you ask more from the relationship? Where can you ask less? Look at your grandfather’s relationship or even your great-grandfather’s relationship. They will come home from work, and a lot of times, they would just go out, and they would just be out drinking with the guys, or they would just be out, and they would just be hanging out with a lot of the other men. Maybe the same with the women. The women would kind of get together a little bit more.

You find a lot less of that in today’s nuclear family. We just don’t reach out. We don’t have as much community in our relationship. I think it’s one of the biggest opportunities that we have.

We touched on this a little bit earlier. But if we can expand our support system for the sake of the marriage, to be able to get internal support. We talked about those three identities to support each person. The him, the her, and then the union as well. Man, that’s when you’ll really start to see relationships rock and roll, which is to know when to ask more from the relationship and then where to ask less. It’s tricky because we’re moving in that direction. 

The suburbs and everything else really isolate us. If you’ve ever traveled actually to, say, third world countries, we spent a month in Vietnam. We lived with the family for a little bit. You’ll go to their house, or you’ll go to the business where they work at a noodle shop, and it’s like four generations of family members just all mixed. We’ve lost a lot of that. That’s not what we need to bring in, but if we can get outside support, that helps a relationship, especially if you have kids.

Right. Date night and a babysitter

A babysitter shouldn’t be that hard to get. And it used to not be that hard to have someone connect with your kids and find someone to do something with your mate. But now it’s like a task, just another thing to put into your to-do list. It’s tough.

I love using Things. That’s my favorite tool. It’s beautiful by Cultured Code. What would be an example of a huge leap forward that you and your wife made in your marriage, where you jumped levels in this video game of life?

That’s an interesting question. I think our biggest thing is coming up with core values for the relationship and putting a specific weight on what that means for us. I’ll give you an example. We have certain core values in our relationship, and one of them is that we take full accountability for our own actions in the relationship, and that takes away the blame game and what is really important to us. We really got clear on freedom, being able to feel free in the relationship and whatever that happens to mean, and being able to get on the same page of our core values. I’ll go back to freedom. Freedom for us is this feeling of, “I want to actually feel more free that I’m in a relationship than if I’m single.”

I’m not talking about sleeping with other people or dating other people. It’s not about that. It’s about, “Can I still feel free to pursue my passions, the things that light me up, and have support in the relationship? Will the relationship container itself support that?” Once we kind of got clear on that, our relationship just really started to up level because we’re like, “Wow, okay, great. I don’t have to do this for you, but, man, you love to do this. How can I help you?” And what that does is when you’re able to bring in those passions and optimize yourself in these areas that are outside, you get to bring a fuller piece. I got to bring a fuller Scott into the relationship, and that was really huge.

I brought this up before on my podcast. But my wife and I had just started dating about eight months ago, and I was about to start this one-year counseling certification program. I had always wanted to learn Spanish, and I was struggling with it, just learning at night school.

I think our biggest thing is coming up with core values for the relationship and putting a specific weight on what that means for us.

I’m like, “Oh, this is my opportunity to have a few months before this program starts. I’d love to go to Costa Rica, immerse myself in learning the language for three months, and take off from a relationship where we’re pretty hot and heavy.” That’s a big ask. She said, “Wow, you know, every time you talk about learning this, you light up. It would be a little bit difficult for me to have you leave for that long, but I want to support you in that.”

I’m a big yes to that. She let me go, and it was an amazing experience. Halfway through it, I flew her down there, and we had a couple of weeks in Costa Rica together. Then she went home, and that’s just a really great example of being able to feel really free in the relationship. We got really clear on our needs, and we created kind of a core value, like what a company would do for our marriage or at that time, it was just for a relationship.

Are you fluent in Spanish now?

I got conversational, and then I just didn’t use it that often. I can get by, but it’s actually gotten a little bit worse. I will say I did up level by the time I left Costa Rica. I can remember this very distinctly. I was in the cab going to the airport, talking to the taxicab driver in Spanish and making my first real good joke in Spanish. He laughed, and I was like, “Oh, that was a moment of pride for me.”

I know we’re up to time here, so if our listener wants to up-level their marriage or intimate relationship, of course, they should check out your retreat and program, The Self-Actualized Marriage, selfactualizedmarriage.com.

That’s an easy way to get ahold of me if they’re interested about the retreat or working one on one with me.

If they wanted to maybe pick one book to start with or one resource, whether it’s a YouTube video or article or whatever, to kind of get them going with improving their relationship, where would you send them?

If you’re just starting on this path, I would probably say Mating in Captivity with Esther Perel is really good. The All-or-Nothing Marriage with Eli Finkel is great, too. It can get a little bit heavy on the numbers, and then the scientific research, but both of those are really great.

You got a book coming out anytime soon?

I don’t know. As you know, I’ve got an almost five months. That’s been taken up all my time. I’ve been deliberate about not bringing too many things on because I want to take this parental leave to focus on him. This year’s nurture. I really, really want to be there and nurture that experience. I’m very selective about what I bring to my plate. So I’m good with the retreat and some of these other projects that I have going on, but a book is not quite on the horizon.

If somebody wanted to work with you on a one-on-one coaching or counseling basis, where should they go?

Go to selfactualizedmarriage.com. That’s the best way if you want to have a conversation to see if working together is a fit. I don’t work with everyone, but if it’s in alignment, I’m more than happy to have that discussion with you, but that’s the best place to get ahold of me.

Awesome. And you have a podcast as well.

I do. I took that parental leave, and that starts wrapping up again in February. There’ll be about the six-month mark, and that’s exactly what I promised myself. But that is at masteringfulfillment.com. We talk a lot about the same subjects as what you talk about on your podcast, just optimization, but we tend to focus a little more on relationships. But it’s a really fun discussion.

This was fun and very inspiring. You’ve got a great thing going with your marriage and with you sharing with your tribe all the learnings and wisdom and lessons and all that. That’s awesome. So keep up the great work.

Thank you, Stephan. I really appreciate the opportunity to speak to your audience. It’s been a real honor and pleasure.

Thank you. And thank you, listener. Get out there. Make it a beautiful week. Do something surprising and awesome for your loved ones. Whether you have an intimate partner or nothing. Do something for somebody that you love, and we’ll catch you in the next episode. I’m your host, Stephan Spencer, signing off.

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